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Smyth backed away. “Ah, thanks.”

Drake swore. “Look lively, guys. This ain’t gonna be pretty.”

A knot of Kovalenko’s men, temporarily cut off from their comrades by the inferno, charged at them. At the precise instant when their weapons coughed, Drake’s team flung themselves every which way but loose. Drake hit the dirt, landing prone on his back, shooting between his own feet. Dahl threw Karin into a doorway, took a bullet in the vest, and returned fire without missing a beat. Alicia and Smyth ducked and sprinted to the right. Komodo slipped behind the chopper, his face lit by the flames.

The first runners collapsed at Drake’s feet, and he had to roll to keep his legs free. Sand and grit turned into a red mush of spilled blood. A man launched himself headlong, coming down on Drake’s stomach. A knife slashed. Drake watched the blade pass between his armpits. When the blade struck dirt, he fired into the man’s abdomen, making him twitch. Cognizance soon vanished from his eyes.

A merc stamped past. Drake reached out and tripped him. He scrambled until his back was against the wall. The merc came at him with a knife and pistol. Drake kicked the pistol aside as it fired, sending the shot skyward, and danced along with the thrust of the knife. In the first eight seconds the merc didn’t make a mistake, staying sharp and lethal. Two seconds later, he had lunged a few inches too far and paid the ultimate price.

Alicia and Smyth joined Komodo in finishing off the last of the attackers but, by then, another sizable group were negotiating the flames.

“Fall back,” Drake shouted. “Ammo’s low.”

“You hear that?” a voice suddenly screamed. “Did you? They’re almost dry. Take them! Take them now!

Drake met the eyes of the others. There was no mistaking the gravelly voice of Dmitry Kovalenko, no matter how perversely excited it sounded. Drake looked at his colleagues, searching hard for their inner resolve, and found pure fire and steel and a will tough enough to withstand hurricanes.

“This battle just became worth every fucking cut and bruise,” Kinimaka grunted. “Everyone here owes this bastard the harshest death.”

“Be careful of his bodyguards,” Karin said. “Mordant and Gabriel. I read about them. They’re said to be the hardest, most dangerous men the penal system has ever seen.”

Kinimaka grunted. “I can second that.”

Drake readied his weapon and turned to face the roaring flames. “The cavalry can’t be far away,” he said. “But this battle ends here and now. We stand.”

Dahl stepped to his right shoulder, Alicia to his left. Komodo, Kinimaka and Smyth ranged out behind him. Karin Blake moved to her boyfriend’s side.

“We stand.”

CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

Through flames of light and shadow they came, the last of the Blood King’s army; faces cast in flickering fire; eyes blackened into demonic pits by the lowering dark; teeth bared and mouths spread wide as if all they wanted was to devour their enemy.

Initially there were a dozen of them. They were followed by Kovalenko himself, flanked by Gabriel and Mordant, The Twins grinning fiercely. This was their arena, their element. This was where they would shine.

The two forces paused for a beat, every man and woman there recognizing the significance of the moment. Who would win and who would die? This place, right here and now, was where the real warriors would prove themselves. Courage was everything. Those who turned away, those who ran, would keep running forever.

“Live or die this day,” Dahl whispered amongst his own. “Live or die.”

Drake turned to them all. “If this is the last and best fight of my life I could not have stood among worthier friends. Thank you.”

Then the ranks broke and the screams went up. The charge was on. Dahl smashed into one well-built merc so hard he actually sent the man tumbling back into the flaming chopper. The mad Swede didn’t even break stride. He barged aside another man, breaking the guy’s shoulder in the process, leaving him on his knees and heaving with pain. Drake hit a third head on, using his forehead harder than at any other time in his life. Fresh blood spattered his face, and he ran right over the collapsing man. Alicia broke a man’s windpipe without losing a beat.

All eyes were on the Blood King.

If this is the last and best fight of my life…

The Blood Vendetta would end today. No more innocents would die. They carved through the Blood King’s ranks; a deadly, unstoppable phalanx of invincible purpose, and it was Dahl, Drake and Alicia who suddenly found themselves facing off with Mordant, Gabriel and Kovalenko.

Time stood still. For them, the whole world might as well have stopped turning. Violent flames lit the scene, flaring, bursting and wreathing between metal, stone and shadow. Kovalenko gave them his most smug grin.

“You cannot beat these men, dah? I am glad it has come to this — to us. A much more fitting end. I could not have written it so well.”

“This madness is finished,” Dahl said. “You are finished.”

“Ah, the great Torsten Dahl. The hero himself. What is it they call you? The Mad Swede? Your family were moments away from good Russian execution, my friend. Moments. They will not survive next time.”

Drake took a step forward. “You killed my friends. You killed Ben and his parents.” He counted each atrocity off on his fingers. “You murdered my team’s families. You might have killed Hayden. Mai. Chika. Jonathan. You kidnapped the bloody President and launched a drone strike on Washington DC. What kind of demon are you, Kovalenko? Is there even a name for the part of Hell you come from?”

“Meh.” Kovalenko flicked it all away with a shrug. “A man born in blood aspires to be serial killer. A man born of evil father aspires to become good marine. But a man born in war aspires to war.” He shrugged. “It is the way of the world.”

With that, Gabriel and Mordant lunged as one, the pair seeming to share some kind of psychic link. Dahl blocked a strike from Mordant, backing up. Drake met Gabriel head on, and felt the power and fury of the man’s blows immediately through every bone in his body. Christ, this guy hit hard. The manic grin never left the dark-skinned face and the body almost seemed to jive to an inner beat. But the blows were relentless, precise and debilitating. An arm that blocks ten severe strikes is not the arm it once was. Drake strove to get on the offensive, but Gabriel never gave him a chance.

In front of the Yorkshireman, Alicia lashed out at the Blood King. Kovalenko was tough, strong and trained, but he was no match for either the Englishwoman’s skill or her fury. He staggered almost immediately, caught himself, then found he was being driven toward the flames.

“Bitch,” he spat. “I am King. I will end your days.”

“Those men who hang around me and have a God complex,” Alicia said. “Those men who fuck with my friends and family often find their balls being kicked so hard they end up with three Adam’s apples. Here, let me demonstrate.”

Alicia feinted and waded in, jabbing Kovalenko’s throat so that his hand went up, then she put her entire weight behind a knee to his groin. Eyes bulging, the Blood King tried to fall to the ground. Alicia didn’t let him. By digging her fingers into the meat of his throat, she ensured he would stay upright.

“Time for my blood vengeance,” she said, then paused when she heard Drake’s cry.

* * *

Kinimaka went down on one knee, using his Glock to pick off the slow and the careless. But he knew he couldn’t stay in one position too long for risk of becoming a sitting duck. Not that anyone had ever compared him to a duck, he knew. In the bird comparisons, he’d have to be an albatross. He slipped over to the wall, noting that six mercs remained on this side of the battle. He met a challenge head on, arresting the guy’s swing and literally hurling him off his feet and against the wall. The man connected hard, then fell back, lifeless.